Short Written Assignment: Critical Listening
Short Written Assignment: Critical Listening
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Choose a composition that you enjoyed listening to from our “Music of the 19th Century
& Romanticism” learning module. Write about the piece considering the following
guiding questions:
Why do you like the piece?
Who wrote the piece?
When was the piece written?
Why was the piece written?
Where was the piece written?
Is the piece similar to other pieces you have heard in this class or elsewhere?
How does the piece make you feel?
Does the piece have a distinctive form?
What is the texture of the piece?
How would you describe the melody? Harmony? Rhythm?
What are the performing forces (instrumentation)?
If there are lyrics to the piece, talk about them. What do they mean? How does the music
help convey a sense of the text?
This writing assignment should be a minimum of 250 words in length. This assignment is
submitted online and will be checked by Turnitin for plagiarized sources and against
a database of previously submitted assignments. It is imperative that you include all citations
(in-text) and references listed at the end of your submission. List all references at the end of
your submission in MLA, APA or Chicago formats. Please review the sample short written
assignment (found in the START HERE module) as a style guide.
To avoid plagiarism in your writing, you should always accurately cite your sources using
one of the major citation formats: MLA, APA, and Chicago Style. (This rule of thumb applies
for this class and any other class you take at Chabot or elsewhere.)
Purdue University has a terrific online resource for MLA, APA, and Chicago style: https://
(https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/purdue_owl.html) purdue.edu/owl/purdue_owl.html
(https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/purdue_owl.html)
For more information about citing sources or seeking additional resources, check with the
school library: http://www.chabotcollege.edu/library
(http://www.chabotcollege.edu/library/) / (http://www.chabotcollege.edu/library/) Page | 160
6.1 objeCTives
1. Demonstrate knowledge of historical and cultural contexts of nineteenth-
century music, including musical Romanticism and nationalism
2. Aurally identify selected genres of nineteenth century music and their
associated expressive aims, uses, and styles
3. Aurally identify the music of selected composers of nineteenth century
music and their associated styles
4. Explain ways in which music and other cultural forms interact in
nineteenth century music in genres such as the art song, program music,
opera, and musical nationalism
6.2 Key Terms and individuals
1848 revolutions
Antonn Dvok
art song
Augmented second
Bedich Smetana
Beethoven
Caspar David Friedrich
chamber music
chromaticism
concerto
conductor
drone
Eugne Delacroix
Exoticism
Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel
Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy
Francisco de Goya
Franz Liszt
Franz Schubert
Fryderyk Chopin
Giuseppe Verdi
ide fixe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
John Philip Sousa
leitmotiv
lied
6nineteenth-Century music and romanticismJeff Kluball and Elizabeth Kramer
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Understanding MUsic nineteenth-centUry MUsic and roManticisM
6.3 inTroduCTion and hisToriCal ConTeXT
This chapter considers music of the nineteenth century, a period often called
the Romantic era in music. Romanticism might be defined as a cultural move-
ment stressing emotion, imagination, and individuality. It started in literature
around 1800 and then spread to art and music. By around 1850, the dominant aes-
thetic (artistic philosophy) of literature and visual art began to shift to what is now
often called a time of realism (cultural expressions of what is perceived as common
and contemporary). Cultural Nationalism (pride in ones culture) and Exoticism
(fascination with the other) also became more pronounced after 1850, as reflected
in art, literature, and music. Realism, nationalism, and Exoticism were prominent
in music as well, although we tend to treat them as sub-categories under a period
of musical Romanticism that spanned the entire century.
In his Preface to the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads (1801), English poet
William Wordsworth declared that all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow
of powerful feelings. The power and expression of emotion exalted by literary
Romanticism was equally important for nineteenth-century music, which often ex-
plicitly attempted to represent every shade of human emotion, the most prominent
of which are love and sorrow. Furthermore, the Romantics were very interested
in the connections between music, literature, and the visual arts. Poets and phi-
losophers rhapsodized about the power of music, and musicians composed both
vocal and instrumental program music explicitly inspired by literature and visual
art. In fact, for many nineteenth-century thinkers, music had risen to the top of
the aesthetic hierarchy. Music was previously perceived as inferior to poetry and
sculpture, as it had no words or form. In the nineteenth century, however, music
was understood to express what words could not express, thus transcending the
Louis Moreau Gottschalk
Mary Shelley
mazurka
nationalism
opera
program symphony
Pyotr Tchaikovsky
Richard Wagner
Robert and Clara Schumann
Romanticism
rubato
salon
scena ad aria (recitative,
cantabile, cabaletta)
soire
sonata
sonata form (exposition,
development, recapitulation)
song cycle
string quartet
strophic
symphonic poem
Symphony
ternary form
through-composed
V.E.R.D.I.
William Wordsworth
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Understanding MUsic nineteenth-centUry MUsic and roManticisM
material for something more ideal and spiritual; some called this expression ab-
solute music.
As we listen to nineteenth-century music, we might hear some similarities with
music of the classical era, but there are also differences. Aesthetically speaking,
classicism tends to emphasize balance, control, proportion, symmetry, and re-
straint. Romanticism seeks out the new, the curious, and the adventurous, empha-
sizing qualities of remoteness, boundlessness, and strangeness. It is characterized
by restless longing and impulsive reaction, as well as freedom of expression and
pursuit of the unattainable. There are many parallels between what was going on
historically in society and what was occurring in music. We cannot study one with-
out studying the other because they are so inter-related, though music will be our
guiding focus.
Geo-politically, the nineteenth century extends from the French Revolution to
a decade or so before World War I. The French Revolution wound down around
1799, when the Napoleonic Wars then ensued. The Napoleonic Wars were waged
by Napolon Bonaparte, who had declared himself emperor of France. Another
war was the Unites States Civil War from 1861-1865. The United States also saw
expansion westward as the gold rush brought in daring settlers. Even though the
United States was growing, England was the dominant world power at this time.
Its whaling trade kept ships sailing and lamps burning. Coal fueled the Industrial
Revolution and the ever-expanding rail system. Economic and social power shifted
increasingly towards the common people due to revolts. These political changes
affected nineteenth-century music as composers who began to aim their music at
the more common people, rather than just the rich.
Political nationalism was on the rise in the nineteenth century. Early in the cen-
tury, Bonapartes conquests spurred on this nationalism, inspiring Italians, Austri-
ans, Germans, Eastern Europeans, and Russians to assert their cultural identities,
even while enduring the political domination of the French. After Frances politi-
cal power diminished with the Congress of Vienna in 1814-1815, politics through-
out much of Europe were still punctuated by revolutions, first a minor revolution
in 1848 in what is now Germany, and then the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871.
Later in the century, Eastern Europeans, in what is now the Czech Republic and
Slovakia, and the Russians developed schools of national music in the face of Aus-
tro-German cultural, and sometimes political, hegemony. Nationalism was fed
by the continued rise of the middle class as well as the rise of republicanism and
democracy, which defines human beings as individuals with responsibilities and
rights derived as much from the social contract as from family, class, or creed.
6.3.1 Philosophy
The nineteenth century saw some of the most famous continental philosophers
of all time: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel (1770-1831), Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), and Friedrich Wilhelm Ni-
etzsche (1844-1900). All responded in some way or another to the ideas of their
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Understanding MUsic nineteenth-centUry MUsic and roManticisM
eighteenth-century predecessor Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who revolutionized
the way human beings saw themselves in relation to others and to God by posit-
ing that human beings can never see the thing in itself and thus must relate as
subjects to the objects that are exterior to themselves. Based on the work of Kant,
as well as on a revival of ancient philosophical idealism, Hegel proposed some
resolution of this subject-object dichotomy by characterizing human existence
as thesis meeting its opposite in antithesis and thus yielding synthesis. Schopen-
hauer, on the other hand, maintained that Kant had been right to point to the
divide between subject and object. (For our purposes here, consider music to be
the human phenomenon in which one might experience the thing, or object, in
itself.) His ideas influenced the musical philosophy of Richard Wagner, and both
of Schopenhauers and Wagners ideas shaped Friedrich Nietzsches early philos-
ophy. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the ideas of Kant and Hegel, and
to a lesser extent Schopenhauer, influenced American Transcendentalism, often
reflected in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) and Henry David
Thoreau (1817-1862).
6.3.2 science
Science and technology made great strides in the nineteenth century. Some of
its inventions increased mobility of the individuals in the Western world, such as
with the proliferation of trains running across newly-laid tracks and steamships
sailing down major rivers and eventually across oceans. Other advances, such as
the commercial telegraph (from the 1830s), allowed news to travel more quickly
than before. All this speed and mobility culminated in the first automobiles that
emerged at the very end of the century. Plate and then chemical photography were
invented in the first half of the 1800s, with film photography emerging at the end of
the century: we have photographs of several of the composers studied in this chap-
ter. Experiments with another sort of recording, sound recording, would get started
in the mid 1800s and finally become commercially available in the twentieth centu-
ry. The nineteenth century saw
ongoing experiments with elec-
tricity and electrically powered
lamps such as the light bulb
that would also blossom as the
century turned.
Romantics were fascinated
by nature, and the middle class
public followed naturalists,
like Americans John James
Audubon (1785-1851) and
John Muir (1838-1914) and the
Englishman Charles Darwin
(1809-1882), as they observed
figure 6.2 | Charles Darwin,
1854
author | Henry Maull and John Fox
source | Wikimedia Commons
license | Public Domain
figure 6.1 | John James
Audubon, 1826
author | John Syme
source | Wikimedia Commons
license | Public Domain
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Understanding MUsic nineteenth-centUry MUsic and roManticisM
and recorded life in the wild. Darwins evolutionary theories based on his voyages
to locales such as the Galapagos Islands were avidly debated among the people of
his day.
6.3.3 visual art
Romantics were fascinated by the imaginary, the grotesque, and by that which
was chronologically or geographically foreign. Emphasis on these topics began to
appear in such late eighteenth-century works as Swiss painter Henry Fuselis
Nightmare from 1781. Romantics were also intrigued by the Gothic style: a young
Goethe raved about it after visiting the Gothic Cathedral in Strasbourg, France. His
writings in turn spurred the completion of the Cathedral in Cologne, Germany,
which had been started in the Gothic style in 1248 and then completed in that same
style between the years of 1842 and 1880.
Romantic interest in the individu-
al, nature, and the supernatural is also
very evident in nineteenth-century land-
scapes, including those of Caspar David
Friedrich (1774-1840). One of his most
famous paintings, Wanderer Above the
Sea of Fog (1818), shows a lone man
with his walking stick, surrounded by a
vast horizon. The man has progressed
to the top of a mountain, but there his
figure 6.3 | The Nightmare
author | Henry Fuseli
source | Wikimedia Commons
license | Public Domain
figure 6.4 | Cologne Cathedral
author | Johann Franz Michiels
source | Wikimedia Commons
license | Public Domain
figure 6.5 | The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog
author | Caspar David Friedrich
source | Wikimedia Commons
license | Public Domain
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Understanding MUsic nineteenth-centUry MUsic and roManticisM
vision is limited due to the fog. We do not see his face, perhaps suggesting the
solitary reality of a human subject both separate from and somehow spiritually
attuned to the natural and supernatural.
In France, Eugne Delacroix (1798-1863) captured the revolutionary and na-
tionalist fervor of the time in such paintings as Liberty Leading the People (1830).
He was also a good friend with musicians Frydryk Chopin and Hector Berlioz,
whom he immortalized in portraits.
Francisco de Goya (1746 -1828) was born in Fuendetodos, Spain. He painted
for the Spanish Royal court, producing portraits of nobility. However, he also
painted works criticizing the social and political problems of his era.
One of Goyas personal projects, Disasters of War, however, was commis-
sioned by no one. It was Goyas private project, which he never even published in
his lifetime. Disasters of War unflinchingly depicts mutilation, torture, rape, and
many other atrocities indiscriminately inflicted on Spanish citizens by French and
Spanish alike. In The Third Day of May, Goya commemorated the Spanish resis-
tance to Napoleons Armies in 1808 in the Peninsular War. It portrays an execu-
tion by Napoleons Troops.
As the nineteenth century progressed, European artists became increasingly
interested in what they called realist topics, that is, in depicting the lives of the
average human, as he or she went about living in the present moment. While the
realism in such art is not devoid of idealizing forces, it does emphasize the validity
of the everyday life as a topic for art alongside the value of craft and technique in
bringing such realist scenes to life.
6.3.4 literature
The novel, which had emerged forcefully in the eighteenth century, became the
literary genre of choice in the nineteenth century. Many German novels focused
on a characters development; most important of these novels are those by the
German philosopher, poet, and playwright, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe who was
fascinated with the supernatural and set the story of Faust. Faust is a man who sells
his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge, in an epic two-part drama. English
figure 6.6 | Liberty Leading
the People
author | Eugne Delacroix
source | Wikimedia Commons
license | Public Domain
figure 6.7 | Disasters of War,
Plate 39
author | Francisco Goya
source | Wikimedia Commons
license | Public Domain
figure 6.8 | The Third of May
1808
author | Francisco Goya
source | Wikimedia Commons
license | Public Domain
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Understanding MUsic nineteenth-centUry MUsic and roManticisM
author Mary Shelley (1797-1851) explored nature and the supernatural in the novel
Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818), which examines current scien-
tific discoveries as participating in the ancient quest to control nature. Later in the
century, British author Charles Dickens exposed the plight of the common man
during a time of Industrialization. In France, Victor Hugo (1802-1885) wrote on a
broad range of themes, from what his age saw as the grotesque in The Hunchback
of Notre-Dame (1831) to the topic of French Revolution in Les Misrables (1862).
Another Frenchman, Gustav Flaubert, captured the psychological and emotional
life of a real woman in Madame Bovary (1856). And in the United States, Mark
Twain created Tom Sawyer (1876).
Besides novels, poetry continued strong in the nineteenth century with such
important English poets as George Gordon, Lord Byron, Wordsworth, Samuel Tay-
lor Coleridge, and John Keats. In addition to Goethe, other German literary figures
included Friedrich Schiller, Adrian Ludwig Richter, Heidrich Heine, Novalis, Lud-
wig Tieck, and E. T. A. Hoffmann; their works contributed librettos and settings
for nineteenth-century music. Near the end of the century, French symbolism, a
movement akin to Impressionism in art and music, emerged in the poetry of Paul
Verlaine, Stphane Mallarm, and Arthur Rimbaud.
For a view of a comprehensive timeline that compares historical events of the
Romantic time period to the musical events of the period go to:
http://www.wmea.com/index.php?module=cms&page=673
6.3.5 nineteenth-Century musical Contexts
We have already alluded to a new respect for vocal and instrumental music
that emerged at the end of the eighteenth century. Musics influence only grew
in the nineteenth century, becoming more prominent yet in the education of the
still growing middle class; even the United States, which throughout most of the
nineteenth century was deemed somewhat a cultural backwaters of the Western
world, had music education in the public schools by the end of the century. An
increasing number of music magazines was published, and amateur music making
in the home and in local civic groups was at a height. Piano music was a major
component of private music making. The salons and soires of upper middle class
and aristocratic women drew many of these private musical performances.
More concerts in public venues enjoyed increased attendance; some of these
concerts were solo recitals and others featured large symphony orchestras, some-
times accompanied by choirs. Their performers were often trained in highly spe-
cialized music schools called conservatories, which took root in major European
cities. By the end of the nineteenth century, traveling virtuoso performers and
composers were some of the most famous personalities of their time. These musi-
cians hailed from all over Europe. Some of them became quite wealthy from reve-
nues of ticket sales and publications. Others fit the stereotype of the starving artist,
paid in respect though not in the currency of their day.
Romantic aesthetics tended to conceptualize musicians as highly individu-
http://www.wmea.com/index.php?module=cms&page=673
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Understanding MUsic nineteenth-centUry MUsic and roManticisM
alistic and often eccentric. Beethoven modeled these concepts and was the most
influential figure of nineteenth-century music, even after his death in 1827. His
perceived alienation from society, the respect he was given, and the belief in the
transformative power of music that was often identified in his compositions, galva-
nized romantic perceptions. His music, popular in its own day, only became more
popular after his death. Subsequent composers looked to his innovations in sym-
phonic compositions, especially his use of recurring motives and themes, as we
heard in the Fifth Symphony. For them, Beethoven was also something of a prob-
lem: how might one compose in the shadow of such a musical giant?
6.3.6 musical Timeline
Events in History Events in Music
1801: Wordsworth publishes his Lyrical Ballades
1814-1815: Congress of Vienna, ending Napo-
leons conquest of Europe and Russia
1815: Schubert publishes The Erlking
1818: Mary Shelley publishes Frankenstein
1818: Caspar David Friedrich paints Wanderer
Above the Sea of Fog
1827: Beethoven dies
1829: Felix Mendelssohn leads a revival of
Bachs St. Matthew Passion,which leads to a
revival of Bachs music more generally
1830s: Eugne Delacroix captures revolution-
ary and nationalist fervor in his paintings
1830: Hector Berlioz premiers his most famous
work, the Symphonie fantastique
1830s: Clara Wieck and Franz Liszt tour (sepa-
rately) as virtuoso pianists
1831: Fryderyk Chopin immigrates to Paris,
from the political turmoil in his native country
of Poland
1832: Johann Wolgang von Goethe dies
1840: Clara and Robert Schumann marry
1850s: Realism becomes prominent in art and
literature
1853: Verdi composes La Traviata
1861-1865: Civil War in the U.S.
1870-71: Franco-Prussian War
1874: Bedich Smetana composes The Moldau
1876: Johannes Brahms completes his First
Symphony
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Understanding MUsic nineteenth-centUry MUsic and roManticisM
1876: Wagner premiers The Ring of the Ni-
belungen at his Festival Theatre in Bayreuth,
Germany
1882: Tchaikovsky writes the 1812 Overture
1891-1892: John Philip Sousa tours the U.S.
leading the U.S. Marine Band
1892-1895: Antonin Dvok visits the U.S.,
helps establish the first American music
conservatory, and composes the New World
Symphony.
6.4 musiC in The nineTeenTh CenTury
6.4.1 music Comparison overview
Classical Music Nineteenth-Century Music
Mostly homophony, but with
variation
New genres such as the symphony
and string quartet
Use of crescendos and
decrescendos
Question and answer (aka
antecedent consequent) phrases
that are shorter than earlier
phrases
New emphasis on musical form: for
example, sonata form, theme and
variations, minuet and trio, rondo,
and first-movement concerto form
Greater use of contrasting
dynamics, articulations, and
tempos
Lyrical melodies, often with wider
leaps
Homophonic style still prevalent,
but with variation
Larger performing forces using
more diverse registers, dynamic
ranges, and timbres
More rubato and tempo fluctuation
within a composition
More chromatic and dissonant
harmonies with increasingly
delayed resolutions
Symphonies, string quartets,
concertos, operas, and sonata-form
movements continue to be written
Newly important miniature genres
and forms such as the Lied and
short piano composition
Program music increasingly
prominent
Further development in
performers virtuosity
No more patronage system
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Understanding MUsic nineteenth-centUry MUsic and roManticisM
6.4.2 General Trends in nineteenth Century music
Musical Style, Performing Forces, and Forms
The nineteenth century is marked by a great diversity in musical styles, from
the conservative to the progressive. As identified by the style comparison chart
above, nineteenth century melodies continue to be tuneful and are perhaps even
more songlike than classical style melodies, although they may contain wider
leaps. They still use sequences, which are often as a part of modulation from one
key to another. Melodies use more chromatic (or colorful) pitches from outside
the home key and scale of a composition. Along with the continuing emphasis on
tuneful melodies comes predominantly homophonic textures, although as compo-
sitions use more instruments, there are also increasing numbers of accompanying,
but relatively interesting, musical lines.
Harmonies in nineteenth-century music are more dissonant than ever. More
chords add a fourth note to the triad, making them more dissonant and chromatic.
These dissonances may be sustained for some time before resolving to a chord that
is consonant. One composition may modulate between several keys, and these keys
often have very different pitch contents. Such modulations tend to disorient the
listening and add to the chaos of the musical selection. Composers were in effect
pushing the harmonic envelope.
The lengths of nineteenth-century musical compositions ran from the min-
ute to the monumental. Songs and short piano pieces might be only a couple of
minutes long, although they were sometimes grouped together in cycles or col-
lections. On the other hand, symphonies and operas grow in size. By the end of
the century, a typical symphony might be an hour long, with the operas of Verdi,
Wagner, and Puccini clocking in at several hours each. Performing forces reflected
similar extremes. There is much nineteenth-century music for solo piano or solo
voice with piano accompaniment. The piano achieved a modern form, with the full
eighty-eight-note keyboard that is still used today and an iron frame that allowed
for greater string tension and a wider range of dynamics. Crescendos and decre-
scendos became more common, alongside more tempo fluctuations, even within
compositions. As we will see, Fryderyk Chopin was the first composer to make
prevalent use of rubato as a performance instruction in his musical scores.
During the nineteenth century, the industrial revolution facilitated and en-
abled marked improvements to many musical instruments besides the piano with
its improved and updated iron frame and tempered metal strings. Efficient valves
were added to the trumpet and a general improvement in metal works tightened
tolerances and metal fittings of all brass instruments. Along with the many im-
provements to instruments, new instruments were researched and created, includ-
ing the piccolo, English horn, tuba, contrabassoon, and saxophone.
Orchestras also increased in size and became more diverse in makeup, thereby
allowing composers to exploit even more divergent dynamics and timbres. With or-
chestral compositions requiring over fifty (and sometimes over 100) musicians, a
conductor was important, and the first famous conductors date from this period. In
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Understanding MUsic nineteenth-centUry MUsic and roManticisM
fact, generally-speaking, the nineteenth-century orchestra looked not unlike what
you might see today at most concerts by most professional orchestras (see Figure 6.9).
Nineteenth-century composers knew well the forms and genres used by their
predecessors, most prominently the music of Beethoven, but also the music of com-
posers such as Mozart, Handel, Haydn, and Bach. They continued to compose in
these forms and genres, while sometimes transforming them into something quite
different, especially among those composers who identified themselves as progres-
sives, as opposed to conservatives. The wider nineteenth-century interest in emotion
and in exploring connections between all of the arts led to musical scores with more
poetic or prose instructions from the composer. It also led to more program music,
which as you will recall, is instrumental music that represents something extra mu-
sical, that is, something outside of music itself, such as nature, a literary text, or a
painting. Nineteenth-century critics and philosophers sustained expansive debates
about ways in which listeners might hear music as related to the extra musical. Extra
musical influences, from the characteristic title to a narrative attached to a musical
score, guided composers and listeners as they composed and heard musical forms.
Genres of Instrumental Music
Some nineteenth-century compositions use titles similar to those found in clas-
sical style music, such as Symphony No. 3, Concerto, Op. 3, or String Quartet
in C Minor. These compositions are sometimes referred to as examples of abso-
lute music (that is, music for the sake of music). Program music with titles came
in several forms. Short piano compositions were described as character pieces
and took on names reflecting their emotional mood, state, or reference. Orchestral
program music included the program symphony and the symphonic poem (also
known as the tone poem). The program symphony was a multi-movement com-
position for orchestra that represented something extra musical, a composition
figure 6.9 | Nineteenth-Century Orchestra Diagram
author | Corey Parson
source | Original Work
license | CC BY-SA 4.0
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Understanding MUsic nineteenth-centUry MUsic and roManticisM
such as Hector Berliozs Symphonie fantastique (discussed below). A symphonic
or tone poem was a one-movement composition for orchestra, again with an extra
musical referent, such as Bedich Smetanas Moldau.
Genres of Vocal Music
Opera continued to be popular in the nineteenth century and was dominated by
Italian styles and form, much like it had been since the seventeenth century. Ital-
ian opera composer Giacomo Rossini even rivaled Beethoven in popularity. By the
1820s, however, other national schools were becoming more influential. Carl Maria
von Webers German operas enhanced the role of the orchestra, whereas French
grand opera by Meyerbeer and others was marked by the use of large choruses and
elaborate sets. Later in the century, composers such as Giuseppe Verdi and Richard
Wagner would synthesize and transform opera into an even more dramatic genre.
Other large-scale choral works in the tradition of the Baroque cantata and ora-
torio were written for civic choirs which would sometimes band together into larg-
er choral ensembles in annual choral festivals. The song for voice and piano saw
revived interest, and art songs were chief among the music performed in the home
for private and group entertainment. The art song is a composition for solo voice
and piano that merges poetic and musical concerns. It became one of the most
popular genres of nineteenth-century Romanticism, a movement that was always
looking for connections between the arts. Sometimes these art songs were grouped
into larger collections called song cycles or, in German, Liederkreis. Among the
important composers of early nineteenth-century German Lieder were Robert and
Clara Schumann, Johannes Brahms, and Franz Schubert.
6.5 musiC of franz sChuberT (1797-1828)
Franz Schubert lived a short but prolific musical life.
Like Joseph Haydn, he performed as a choirboy until
his voice broke. He also received music lessons in violin,
piano, organ, voice and musical harmony: many of his
teachers remarked on the young boys genius. Schubert
followed in his fathers footsteps for several years, teach-
ing school through his late teens, until he shifted his at-
tention to music composition fulltime in 1818. By that
time he had already composed masterpieces for which
he is still known, including the German Lied, Der Er-
lknig (in English, The Erlking), which we will discuss.
Schubert spent his entire life in Vienna in the shad-
ow of the two most famous composers of his day: Lud-
wig van Beethoven, whose music we have already dis-
cussed, and Gioachino Rossini, whose Italian operas
were particularly popular in Vienna in the first decade.
Inspired by the music of Beethoven, Schubert wrote powerful symphonies and
figure 6.10 | Franz Schubert
author | Wilhelm August Rieder
source | Wikimedia Commons
license | Public Domain
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Understanding MUsic nineteenth-centUry MUsic and roManticisM
chamber music, which are still played today; his Great Symphony in C major is
thought by many to be Schuberts finest contribution to the genre. He wrote the sym-
phony in 1825 and 1826, but it remained unpublished and indeed perhaps unper-
formed until Robert Schumann discovered it in 1838. Schumann famously remarked
on the heavenly length of this composition that can take almost an hour to per-
form. One reason for its length is its melodic lyricism, although the symphony also
reflects the motivic developmental innovations of Beethoven.
Schubert also wrote operas and
church music. His greatest legacy,
however, lies in his more than 600
Lieder, or art songs. His songs are
notable for their beautiful melodies
and clever use of piano accompani-
ment and bring together poetry and
music in an exemplary fashion. Most
are short, stand alone pieces of one
and a half to five minutes in length,
but he also wrote a couple of song cy-
cles. These songs were published and
performed in many pr
